


The Violinist

by waterloosunset123



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Canon, Classical Music, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Music, POV First Person, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock Has Taught John About Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterloosunset123/pseuds/waterloosunset123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"However, I, acquainted as I am with his every mood, his every facial motion, his breathing, know today he’s not just playing to ease the turmoil of his mind, to drown the constant, erratic motion of his consciousness. He’s playing because he’s letting something go."</p><p>John takes three months to forgive Sherlock after he comes back after The Fall. On their first case Post-Reichenbach, a month later than that, he is invited back to Baker Street as they solve a case. Sherlock plays the violin and John not only hears... he listens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Violinist

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of music references.  
> Suggested Listening:  
> -Vivaldi: RV 273, 1st Movement.  
> -Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, 1st Movement.

An arduous case. An unsolvable mystery. He paces around the room. Rarely has his violin inside its case, because he needs it to think, but this time it’s locked inside (for reasons only known to him). Our first official case after The Fall. I’m dreaming, yet decidedly not. He places the violin case on top of the coffee table. It is a large rectangular case, with space for four (certainly for Sherlock) well-loved bows and a gold-rimmed hygrometer nestled by the place where the violin's neck goes. I believe the tiny peg that is used as a handle on the small compartment for storing rosin, strings, and the like is also gold. _Pure_ gold, if I had a bet. On the inside, the case's lining is shining burgundy silk; on the outside, it is a simple, yet no doubt fine, deep, dark scarlet fabric outlined by black leather on the edges. _Red_ : the colour of passion. That is how Sherlock Holmes approaches the violin. With as much passion as he approaches The Work. He gets his Stradivarius out, the fingers of his left hand gently wrapping about the neck whilst his right cradles its body. He smiles. There is something indeed in his countenance that differs tonight.

“What are you about to play?” I ask. Normally, that question would not ever leave my lips as he lifts the instrument to his chin ever so gently, and begins tuning every string, like they’re a new-born child and he thinks he’ll break them. Finally, the G string is tuned. He knows I know little of music, in general, but my interest in anything is intensified when that anything obviously has left such an imprint on him.

“Let’s see what comes out.” Simple. It might even be termed deflective, if I was not so sure to have never seen him need music’s release as much as he does now. He’s gasping for it. He might play anything. The right corner of his lips moves up in earnest smile. He breathes out and shuts his eyes. Today is certainly a day for abnormal developments— his icy blue eyes are, despite themselves, brilliantly expressive, and I habitually do not think myself capable of gauging the approximate inner workings of his mind without their fire, their calculating penetrance, their constant display of the emotional range he wishes he didn’t have. However, I, acquainted as I am with his every mood, his every facial motion, his breathing, know today he’s not just playing to ease the turmoil of his mind, to drown the constant, erratic motion of his consciousness. He’s playing because he’s letting something go. Letting go of the guilt of hurting me for three years. Letting go of the pain he suffered when he was away ( _Oh, God, what did they do to him? Beat him up? Whip him? I don’t ask. I never ask. It would pain me too much to find out the truth of it_ ). He's letting go of Moriarty’s final strike.

He raises his bow, right arm bending purposefully. His fingers around the neck take their position upon the steely strings. The bulb from the kitchen is enough to bring light to his face, even as he turns toward the window, from which the city pours in with adamant beauty. His face, his entire demeanour,  _always_ changes when he plays. In three years and four months, I never forgot that. I can see it now, even if he hasn't produced a single note. There is a complete lack of his usual hard edges. There is no roughness or bite. No arrogance. No hint of distance. It's the closest I ever get to him, I suppose- when I watch him play. If it was up to me, he'd never know how mesmerising I find that, but I suspect that if he ever got one look at me, he would have known within the second. There would have undoubtedly been utter fascination etched in indelible ink all over my face as he played. There always is. I'm not even sure I'm capable of feigning nonchalance now, even if I wanted to. It would not work with him, anyway. Of course, he knows. He's bound to know by now, so I don't bother. He takes a steadying breath and begins.

Arpeggios in a minor key, I know that much. It is slow. Baroque, judging by the way the music is like a river, never stopping until it reaches a lake of cadence and rest. It has a driving force of short bowings and  _staccato_ articulation (yes, he has been teaching me). Double-stops and chords. Moving ceaselessly from one to the other. It might be Bach or Vivaldi. He  _is_ partial to them. I know. The melody courses with harmony because string instruments can do that and because he loves being able to accompany himself, fingers forming the triads with ease, quivering each one heavy and slow, the weight of his soul right there for me to hear in the vibrato. He has four strings with which to work and he makes full use of them.

It is woeful. Like the most elegant funeral march in creation. So… delicate and profound. I can’t help thinking he’s mourning something. He’s mourning what he lost when he fell off that roof. What was it, exactly? Yes, I took a long time to forgive him.   _Three months and two days, John,_ he’d say. Is he mourning the loss of me? Is he mourning the loss of what we had? Because he knows it will take a while for the status quo to return. He knows. I’ve told him.  _Just one word, Sherlock: that is all I would have needed_ . He said nothing of consequence in return (impossible, I know, for Mr Punch-line). He simply spewed out some lie about wanting to contact me during all that time. Truth is he didn’t care. Might not have cared. I don’t know. (Am I being unfair?). Well, in any case, he had to learn: you lose your Boswell if you don’t take care of him. Without a warning, he has opened up the wound again, four months later. Just with the music. Damn him. I fight back a sigh.

His face is stone-cold. He has gone pale (well, paler than usual). The music continues on. A second theme. Faster, full of fire and rage. In minor still. Fingers flying impossibly frantic up and down the fingerboard. His bow assaults the strings rather than caresses them. He squeezes his mouth shut and huffs out a hard breath. Grinds out the quick  _sforzandos_ and accents with precision and disdain alike. Suddenly, his bow is also bouncing blindingly fast on the strings. It’s a race to oblivion, it seems. Playful on the surface, like the impossibly fast and fluid string crossings, and, yet… yes, it’s also distant. It’s distance, now. He always wants to distance himself from his emotions. But, with a Stradivarius under his chin, long, white fingers splayed upon the black fingerboard, bow moving in long and short bursts of lightning, with furious trills and solid notes filling the air around them like a perfume that is diffusing out of its bottle, he can’t hide it. He’s emotional. It’s his ire bleeding through on every string. Anger at Moriarty? For separating us? For getting him to die for me? He’s dead, Sherlock. What’s the use of being angry anymore? You’ve dismantled his network. It’s over. Anger at Mycroft? For giving him this impossible case? Nonsense. He draws life from impossible cases. He thrives on them. His mind rebels at stagnation. Anger at himself? Ah, there’s the rub. Frustration. That’s it.  _Yes, anger at myself. Frustration. Do keep up, John_ . It took me a while. It always does.

He opens his eyes to take the city in. London at night is soothing. It’s everything to him. Baker Street. London. England. The music is major now. And he’s progressed to Romanticism. This, I know, because the strings produce a song as close to the human voice as possible. It’s lush and lyrical and and haunting, and he makes it poetic with a single note. Not quite the weight of Wagner, not quite the lightness of Strauss or the, I’m sure he’d think, absurd emotionality of Brahms (I _like_ Brahms. We’ve agreed to disagree). Might be an Italian operatic aria arranged for violin. Or Mendelssohn. Might be Beethoven in his later years. What the hell do I know? He hasn’t taught me that far. His breath is even. Peaceful and calm. This is a _breathing_ isn’t _boring_ kind of night, because he obviously needed it, even if he still hasn’t solved the case yet. The tempo is slow. He draws the bow carefully, gracefully, shaping within the melody the whirlwind words of a Shakespearean sonnet anachronistically backed by the faraway logic of a futuristic, complex harmony. He steps back from the window. Closes his eyes again. He moves to a higher register, changing themes. Longing and pain. That damned vibrato again, saying so much with a tremble of the fingers. What is he longing for? I can hear it, but it means nothing to me. He’s restless at the best of times, but this is beyond that. Not just restlessness. This is anxiety wrapped up in the soothing blanket of the breath-taking rise and fall of the melody. It’s fear. What does he fear? That I’ll be gone? No, Sherlock. I’m here. And I’m never going away, unless you command me otherwise. I’ve not seen him that afraid since Dartmoor. It’s okay, Sherlock. Really, it is.

He looks at me. Seldom does when he plays. His eyes. So soft. So uncharacteristically fragile as he rises up to the trepidations of the second half of the piece. Steel grey, icy blue and emerald green all at once. He blinks. There’s redness, there, too, in the sclerae. Why? Crying? He blinks again, slowly, and looks away. He hisses through his nose, mouth shut. He hates sentiment. Especially his own. He looks down at the floor. He’s surrendered. What to? I don’t know. To losing me? To me being perpetually cold and distant like I have been for four months before he called me on a case today? Should I have done that? I’m not so sure anymore. It hurts to breathe. He’s pleading, next, a question in the incomplete cadence of a sad phrase. What is he asking? For me to stay? To forgive him? It’s not a question. Of course I’ll stay. Of _course_ I forgive him. That’s what I said, isn’t it? The great idiot, the great genius – made of flesh and bone, after all. You don’t have to be afraid of feeling things, Sherlock. You’re human. Just like me.

He draws his eyes shut. Tight. His breath shudders. A tinge of clear sweat on his neck, visible by the light of a lamp-post outside. It’s like he feels he might break in the throes of a  _pianissimo_ nearing the end. I smile, a meaning there, inestimable. I might be saying  _you’re no less fascinating when you actually let me see you for real_ , which is true. I don’t know. He makes me think and say maudlin things sometimes. Even when I’m not quite done being furious at him. He keeps playing. And the music explodes with a marginal blaze, heating up with the richness of the full colour spectrum, rising up and falling with lightning and ice, with overwhelming perfection. A  _fortissimo_ . An  _accelerando_ . A move into minor. Grief, pain, and longing. Mine, and his. And it falls, like he did, into nothingness.

He lets the last note ring, soft as it is, like he’s afraid of what will happen if he lets it go. Holding on to God-knows-what. He sighs. Actually sighs. Leaves the bow upon the string for a few seconds before moving it down parallel to his right leg. He draws his left hand down next. It’s trembling a bit. Must be taxing for him. Having so much to release in one go. How does he handle it? _I_ couldn’t even handle it, and I had three months to get used to it. _And_ three years of grieving his death before that. He grips the neck of the violin, again his other hand cradling it, and puts it securely within its case. Puts rosin on the bow, languidly watching it move back and forth as he does so, closing the compartment with the golden peg when he puts the rosin away. He unscrews the bow, the thin horse-hairs also finding their release tonight. Finally, he places the bow back. He’s apprehensive. Why? I have no idea.

“I’m sorry, John.” He says, the hard edges of his voice not quite forming.

“I know,” I answer, tenderly, my hand around a mug of tea that was supposed to be near scalding when he started playing.

“You do?”

“Yes.” My gaze meets his. “How could I not have heard it, Sherlock?” I hope he understands what I mean. _I’m here, I forgive you, and I’m never going to leave you_ , _you bastard_.

“Good.” He whispers it so that I almost cannot hear it.

We both smile. It’s  _all_ fine.


End file.
